|
|
News from Garfield Farm |
Knowledge of the past is proving critical to
the future of the country and Garfield Farm Museum’s 19th Annual
Heirloom Garden Show on Sunday August 24 from 11 am - 4 pm is just such
a wealth of accumulated knowledge.
The wonders of technology and an excessive
focus on popular culture have disconnected most Americans from the
basics of survival. The rise in gas prices is greatly upsetting daily
life which makes the ability of GPS direction finding system in
one’s car irrelevant compared to simply being able to afford
where one has to go. The historic record of temperatures and the
glacial record have all the leading scientists convinced of global
warming. The crisis of interest rates and economic cycles proves houses
should be considered homes first and investments second.
These seemingly unrelated factors: oil costs,
global warming, and housing sprawl have a very direct connection to
plant genetics that our country depends upon for survival. Current
agriculture depends on oil for powering tractors, making fertilizer and
pesticides, as well as shipping food. It assumes there is no limit to
productive soils or water supply. Increase in oil costs, shifts in
temperature and rain patterns, and continued bulldozing of productive
land for houses will make the current era of cheap food a fond memory.
Only those crops, fruits, and vegetables that can survive well with a
minimum of oil inputs, hotter and drier extremes, and grow in less
productive soils will be critical for such an uncertain future of
change.
The Heirloom Garden Show reflects hundreds of years
of breeding varieties of plants to meet different conditions. Several
factors have shaped the genetics of our food: resistance to disease,
ability to thrive in dry, wet, weedy conditions, or poor soils, just to
name a few. The mass market depends on that one or two varieties that
produce the highest return. Offering food or any product at the
cheapest price does not necessarily show all the real costs of
production to a society. Tax dollars are spent to subsidize everything
from highways, irrigation systems, and political stability in oil
producing regions so these hidden costs still hit everyone’s
wallet. This makes genetic diversity critical to respond to ever
changing conditions.
The Heirloom Garden Show will feature
gardeners and produce growers from the Great Lakes region to display,
offer for tasting or sell their bounty that is in season. August of
course is the month for tomatoes. This being one of the most popular
vegetables (technically a fruit -- the seeds are inside) visitors are
always amazed to see all shapes, sizes and colors at the show.
Tomatoes are just some of the items from the garden that Underwood
Gardens will bring. Underwood, with new manager Pat Kraft, will have a
variety of tomatoes, beans, organic fertilizers, and many other items
on display. What would the Garden Show be without Jimmy Doyle, from
Jimmy’s Chilies in Tinley Park, who will exhibit different
varieties of tomatoes, as well as chilies. This year, Curzio Caravati
who is part of the Kenosha Potato Project, shall describe the work they
have been doing in Kenosha, WI with the potato.
Many of the exhibitors are members of the Seed
Savers Exchange, a remarkable grass roots effort begun in 1975 and that
has expanded to 889 acre site with 51 organic garden plots with
isolated gardens to prevent cross pollination of the over 3000
varieties grown each year out of a 25,000 variety collection. Located
in Decorah, Iowa, Seed Savers has annually received a portion of the
proceeds from the Heirloom Garden Show.
In contrast to culinary plants, the museum also
grows a variety of old fashioned flowers, many the ancestors to popular
modern hybrids. Balsams, kiss me over the garden gate, spider flower,
love in a mist, four o?clocks are just some of the fanciful names once
familiar to gardeners of 100 years ago, that can be seen at the
museum’s flower garden.
The focal point of the museum, the 1846 brick tavern will also be open
for tours. Food and refreshments will be available from the Inglenook
Pantry of Geneva, IL. The show is $6 for adults and $2 for children
under 13 years of age. For information contact 630 584-8485 or email
info@garfieldfarm.org. The museum is located 5 miles west of Geneva, IL
off ILL Rt.38 on Garfield Road. This historically intact former 1840s
Illinois prairie farmstead is being restored as an 1840s working farm
museum by donors and volunteers from around the country.